India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c10.s1.16

c10.s1.16

NAMING OF VEDIC STUDENTS—Students were called after the names of the Chhandas works then studied in the different recensions or *Śākhās*, in the Vedic schools (*charaṇas*). According to Pāṇini the names of Chhandas works and the Brāhmaṇa texts attached to each *Śākhā* were not used as current except with reference to the students or persons learned in them (*Chhando-Brāhmaṇāni cha tadvishayāṇi*, IV.2.66, under the context *Tadadhīte tadveda*). The grammatical form undergoes a double process. For example, the original teacher (*pratyaksha-kārī*, IV.3.104.1) Kaṭha was the promulgator of a Chhāndasa *Śākhā* text. The relationship between Kaṭha and his work was first expressed by a suffix taught under *Tena proktam* (IV.3.101). To the word thus formed was added a second suffix to denote a student studying that text. In practice the second affix denoting the student was elided (*Proktāl-luk*, IV.2.64), with the result that the name of the *Śākhā* and the name of the Brāhmaṇa work always pointed to the students studying them. This position is emphasized by the fact that the names of Vedic texts could not be used alone except in relation to their students, *e.g.* *Kaṭhāḥ*, the students of the *Kaṭha Śākhā*, promulgated (*prokta*) by the teacher Kaṭha (*Kaṭhena proktam adhīyate*). The word Kaṭha which ordinarily should have been the name of the book was reserved to denote the entire body of those students and teachers who devoted themselves to its study (*adhīyāna*) and attained proficiency therein (*tad-veda*). The Kaṭhas stood for a real school. The same principle of naming held good for hundreds of other Vedic *Śākhās* or Saṁhitās and Brāhmaṇas, which had then become established for long not merely as books, but as institutions with a fellowship of teachers and pupils devoted to their study. This is the main purport of the important *sūtra Chhando-Brāhmaṇāni cha tadvishayāṇi*. The text of a Vedic *Śākhā* would grow into a living institution and spread into offshoots claiming numerous teachers and students within its fold. The original teacher was the nucleus round whom there grew up an appropriate literature of exposition like the *Brāhmaṇas*, to which contributions were made by teachers and pupils of successive generations, expanding their literary heritage. The *Charaṇa* began as an educational institution following a particular *Śākhā* text; in course of time it developed its full literature comprising *Brāhmaṇa*, *Āraṇyaka* and *Upanishad* texts, *Kalpa* or *Śrauta Sūtras* (cf. *Purāṇa-prokteshu Brāhmaṇa-Kalpeshu*, IV.3.105), and later on even its *Dharmasūtra* to which Pāṇini refers in the *sūtra Charaṇebhyo Dharmavat* (IV.2.46). This represented its normal evolution, but there were many subsidiary schools confined to one or more classes of texts, and justifying their activity by even a Sūtra text (*sūtra-charaṇa*). A good number of the names of these Vedic schools, or, which is the same thing, of their students, are preserved in the *Ashṭādhyāyī*, constituting a rich record of the Vedic literature existing before Pāṇini, which will be noticed later.